by Angus Watson
“Without any of them being killed!” said Finn. It was a cheering thought in this land of misery.
“Unless they burned their dead before leaving,” said Paloma. “Which they would have done.”
Sassa Lipchewer had found a fur for Finn in the tents. She handed it to him, said how good it was to see him back on his feet and they headed off, towards a snowy shoulder of mountains.
“Shouldn’t we go round the mountains?” Finn asked Sitsi Kestrel. Away from the river, they were in snow shoes, winding between boulders and bushes. It was hard going.
“It will be colder for longer up high,” said Sitsi.
“Well, exactly.”
“So we’re less likely to encounter any beasts.”
“Oh. Good point.”
“Have I told you how I think the beasts are made?”
“Out of the land and plants.”
“Well, yes, that’s part of it, but now I think there’s more to it. You see—”
Finn half listened to Sitsi as they tramped up and up. It was a different climb from the previous mountains they’d ascended–not so steep but very long. Desert bushes and cactuses gave way to trees as they ascended, and soon they were in proper woods for the first time since the Shining Mountains. The snow was less thick on the ground here and they were able to remove their snow shoes.
Just when Finn was beginning to relax and enjoy the scenery, they caught up with Paloma standing next to another giant hairless dog corpse.
Sitsi walked around it. “This one’s been killed by spears, too,” she said, “but the spears are gone. Which makes me wonder why the last lot left their spears in the beasts that they killed. Maybe the people in the village were all killed, and the dogs they didn’t kill ate them, bones and all.”
“That’s horrible!” said Freydis.
“Yeah, Sitsi,” said Paloma.
“And not necessarily true,” said Wulf. “This one is miles away from any settlements. The people who killed it would have only had one spear each, which they would have taken with them. Down in the village they’d have a huge pile of spears, so they didn’t need to take them out of the dead dogs.”
“That sounds much more likely,” said Freydis.
Sitsi rolled her eyes. “So why didn’t we find a pile of spears in the village,” she muttered.
At the summit–or what seemed like the summit but probably wasn’t if Finn’s experience of walking uphill was anything to go by–was a huge view of red, rocky desert, mesas and mountains to the west, towards where The Meadows was meant to be. Far off were great storm clouds. Finn kept an eye on them. They were very black and swirling weirdly. At this distance they looked like a child’s toy clouds, but as he watched a tornado spiralled down.
“Look everyone!” he called, pointing westwards.
Even though they couldn’t hear it from this great distance, they could see its awesome power. Finn shuddered, remembering the tornado that had tried to kill him on the far side of the Water Mother. That one had been dark. This one was white.
“Snownado,” said Wulf.
“How far away is it?” asked Erik.
“A day’s walk,” said Sofi.
“That far? But that would make it…”
“It’s big,” finished Sitsi.
Darkness rose through the spinning storm, turning it from white to grey to black as it thickened and thickened. Soon the twister was as wide as it was high, and blacker than the storm clouds. They could hear it now, a quiet yet somehow still huge, all-encompassing rumble.
“Frog a dog,” said Sassa. “Ottar, is that the way we’re headed?”
Ottar, staring wide-eyed at the vortex, nodded.
“Tornados are rare,” said Thyri. “If there’s one today, chances are—”
Sofi put a hand on her shoulder and pointed to where another spike of cloud was twisting down out of the black sky. Its point struck the ground and whitened, sucking up snow. It headed north following the path of the first, blackening and thickening. It wasn’t as huge as the first one, but it was plenty big enough.
“You were saying, Thyri?” asked Keef.
The descent was their easiest walking for a long while. Sitsi Kestrel might have felt jaunty had it not been for the land of tornado storms that they were walking into and the threat of the huge hairless dogs.
There was no snow on the ground this side of the mountain, and the animals–standard woodland animals, thank Innowak–were back in abundance. Squirrels and chipmunks chased about, a couple of badgers foraged and tubby little birds sang happily from the branches of fir trees.
Keef jumped about waving Arse Splitter and battling imaginary foes. He hadn’t done that for a while, Sitsi realised. He was a great man but he was kind of animalistic. When rodents and songbirds thought that there were no predators around, they would dance and sing. It seemed Keef was governed by the same principles.
They came to a large boulder. Paloma was already scouting ahead and around, but Sitsi thought it wouldn’t do any harm to climb up the boulder and see what she could espy.
A couple of miles down the hill, walking purposefully towards them, were twelve warriors. They wore leather trousers, leather jerkins and leather caps. Ten of them carried short spears with oversized stone heads. Two carried ridiculously thick bows and had quivers of thick-stemmed arrows on their backs.
“I think we’re about to meet the Warrior and Warlock tribe!” she called down to the others. “The Warrior bit of it, anyway!”
Chapter 12
Warriors and Warlocks
Paloma Pronghorn strolled from the trees and joined the path a couple of hundred paces upslope from the large strangers. The trail led through a well-grazed meadow so the dozen people heading up the hill could see her as plainly as she could see them. They were strolling easily, neither aggressive nor defensive. All were men. An impressive looking lot. Their spears had stout wooden shafts and enormous stone heads–more club than spear. The two archers’ bows were thicker than her killing stick.
If they were alchemically enhanced and they attacked, she’d be in trouble. Even if they weren’t, Paloma might struggle to beat them all. She’d be able to run away, though.
“Hi,” said Paloma, cracking her best “I have hidden powers and you should be scared of me” smile.
“Wait here, friends.” The oldest looking of the strangers held up a hand and strode forward heavily. He was Erik’s height–they all were–with an even broader chest. Although he looked strong and fit, he might have been sixty years old.
“Hello, woman warrior!” he called. His smile was warm, but the word “woman” could have been replaced by the word “little” with no change in tone or intention. No matter. Men who thought of the Owsla as just little women were the most fun to kill. “I’m Janny,” he said. “What’s your name and where are the rest of you?”
“How do you know it’s not just me?”
“Warlocks!” Janny raised his eyebrows. “They have their uses. One of our warlocks saw the twelve of you coming. He said that you were friendly, but he’s been wrong before. He also said that you are vital in the battle against the Warlock Queen.”
“We are friendly and vital,” Paloma resisted the urged to step back. The man was large and too close and his bonhomie was false. Could be his character–plenty of old fuckers were false–or he could be about to attack.
“Great news!” He clapped a meaty hand onto Paloma’s shoulder. “We’re friendly, too! Let’s wait for the others and we’ll take you down to the village. You can rest and spend the night with us.”
She slipped her shoulder out from under his hand and he didn’t seem to mind. Phew, she thought, he’s just touchy-feely and fake then. She wasn’t exactly a fan of patronising, chauvinistic old men, but it was better than another spear to the guts.
Without much to talk about as they waited, Paloma told them about the retrieval of the boy’s coffin and their intention to take it to The Meadows, and then stopped, wondering whe
ther she’d already told the strangers too much.
She didn’t like the way they all smiled at her one little bit.
Sitsi Kestrel saw Paloma sitting with the Warriors, seemingly at ease, and told Sofi that it looked all right to approach.
The oldest looking of the Warriors–a burly fellow named Janny–greeted them effusively and said that they must spend the evening in their village. He was avuncular and jolly. Sitsi liked him immediately.
She walked down the hill next to Janny, ahead of the others. He told her that he was the leader of a small group split from the Warrior and Warlock tribe, settled in the village they were headed towards.
Many of his tribe, he said, had been killed, many had fled. The couple of thousand who’d survived had found a new base in the Valley of the Gods, just over a day’s walk to the west. Many more had been killed since.
“But the Valley of the Gods is a beautiful place, a glory!” Janny raised his arms in praise as the valley broadened and flattened. Up ahead, smoke from village cook fires snaked up into a clear blue sky. “In its way, the Valley of the Gods is even more glorious than The Meadows used to be, but, like everywhere else, it has been hit by the Warlock Queen’s disasters and it has suffered. A huge flash flood struck just a moon ago.”
“Is the Valley of the Gods close to The Meadows?” Sitsi asked.
“You can canoe to the edge of The Meadows downstream in a few days. Coming back takes longer.”
“Have you seen The Meadows?”
“We’ve launched a series of attacks on the Warlock Queen. The warlocks say that her power is flowing from her tomb, The Pyramid, and if we could get into to that tomb we might be able to stop it. So far we’ve failed. We haven’t even got close. I’ve been on two raids and both were disasters.” Janny shook his head.
“What happened?” asked Sitsi.
Janny walked on, looking grim. “The Meadows is a vast area of relatively flat land surrounded by mountains,” he said eventually. “The Pyramid is a huge, triangular man-made mountain more or less in the centre. I take it you’ve encountered some monsters on the way here?”
“A couple.”
“The monsters filling The Meadows are worse. The plain is filled with crawling, striding and slithering beasts. They slaughter and eat each other but they are constantly replaced, growing from the ground itself. That first raid, I thought I’d seen the greatest horrors. Two moons later, about two moons ago, the monsters were larger, more disgusting and much more numerous. I hate to think what they are like now.”
“How did you attack?”
“First raid we tried the warrior way. We ran at the tomb with spears in hand. We got a couple of hundred paces before retreating. Of the fifty who’d attacked, ten made it out.” Janny stroked his moustache. “The second raid was a warlock-planned affair on a moonless, cloudy night. Only a dozen died on that one, but it got us nowhere. People have tried a few other schemes, but all plans have failed and almost all have ended in death.”
“Have any got close?” asked Sitsi.
“Nobody has been within two, maybe three miles of The Pyramid since the disasters started, and now it is impossible to get that close. Impossible.” Janny shook his head.
“Why?”
“The monsters. There is no break in them for miles around The Pyramid. It would take an army of men to defeat even one of the larger creatures and they don’t appear to sleep. The warlocks say they will spill out soon and we’ll all be killed.”
“So why are you here? Are you…” Sitsi wanted to say giving up and fleeing but that didn’t seem polite.
“Are we chickening out, do you mean?”
“No! I just…”
Janny chuckled. “It’s all right. I had a bit of a disagreement with the Warrior and Warlock leaders. Along with a few others,” he indicated the people around him, “we don’t see the sense in staying in the Valley of the Gods and sending people to die in The Meadows. We want to look for a solution elsewhere.”
“What have you found?”
“Nothing!” he laughed. “As you advance in years, Sitsi, you’ll realise that people are lazy and flawed. I certainly am! We hadn’t come far when we found a deserted but well-fortified village. We decided to bide in the village, to see if the others manage to stop the horrors spewing out of The Meadows. We have supplies and we’re safe. Even if a tornado struck there are underground chambers for shelter.”
“But, surely, if an army of the Warlock Queen’s creations is about to surge from The Meadows…?”
“Have you noticed the monsters don’t like cold weather? If we’re still alive and the Warlock Queen is still undefeated come winter, we’ll head on.”
“Sure, they don’t like the cold,” said Sitsi. “But it also seems that the Warlock Queen can control the weather.”
“You,” beamed Janny, “are perhaps the brightest woman I’ve ever met.”
Sitsi nodded, trying not to smile.
“Now, that large box that your big friend is towing,” Janny asked. “Is it really the Warlock Queen’s son?”
“So we hope.”
“Fascinating. Tell me more.”
So, as they marched down the hill at the head of the parade of Warriors, Calnians and Wootah, Sitsi told Janny everything. He was a very good listener.
The village did look resilient. It was stone-built and squat, a series of boxes crammed together like the village on Bighorn Island, but all on one level, three sides of a solid square. Some of the dwellings had heavy wooden doors and others had ladders poking up from their roofs.
Sitsi expected to see children and animals in a place like this, but there were none. The smell of deer and corn cooking on buffalo-dung fires was very welcoming, however.
Janny shouted a greeting and people emerged. Several tall women of varying ages ducked under door frames which had been made for shorter people. They stared at the newcomers. They wore plain, long cotton dresses with no adornment; no jewellery, no feathers, nothing. It was weird. They eyed the Owsla women and Thyri, ignored the rest of them, curled their lips like surly wolves and went back into the dwellings.
Stepping from the ladders onto several of the roofs were shorter men. Warlocks, thought Sitsi to herself. Yoki Choppa had been unusual as a warlock in that his dress was unaffected. Nothing about his breechcloth or anything else about his attire said “I am a warlock”.
The outfits on this lot, however, screamed warlock. They wore white leather moccasins, purple bandages on their left legs only, red cotton shorts, peaked caps and, most demonstrably and–to Sitsi, most annoyingly–bulky jerkins made of parrot feathers.
Sitsi didn’t hate fashion. If people wanted to look silly it was up to them. What riled her were fashionable clothes that hampered the user. Some of the children in Calnia, for example, had taken to wearing their breechcloths below their arses rather than around their waists. It was a display against authority–an announcement that they’d make their own rules. Sitsi understood. It was nice for children to feel that they were different from their parents for a while before they matured into conformity. What annoyed her was that breechclothes worn around the arse were such a handicap. They had to be hoisted up the whole time. Running was impossible. A gang of children wearing low-slung breechcloths had been attacked by a bear on one of Calnia’s outlying farms. Three had been killed when their breechcloths had fallen around their feet and tripped them.
The parrot jackets were like that. Bulky and fragile, wearing them would restrict movement and you’d waste a lot of time mending them. People who wore fashions like that, as far as Sitsi was concerned, might as well have just walked around repeating the words I am an idiot.
The warlocks were all men, like the warriors. She’d come across tribes with strictly defined gender roles before. Again, people could do what they wanted, but, really, preventing half the population from contributing to the most important roles–or the least important for that matter–was even dumber than wearing your breechcloth below y
our arse.
“Welcome to our village!” called Janny. “These flamboyant fellows are the Warlocks.” Sitsi could tell by the way he said flamboyant that Janny thought the same as she did about their outfits.
The two groups greeted each other. There was a little wariness, but Sitsi thought that was normal with any two groups of strangers coming together. You could tell a group by its leader, she thought, and Janny was a decent chap. It was odd that the women kept their distance, but the other men were friendly.
They ate an evening meal of deer and cake. The women never reappeared, but after the way they’d snarled at the Owsla, Sitsi wasn’t exactly desperate to engage with them. She ended up listening to the life story of a warlock called Pook.
She asked him about the feather jerkins.
“Only warlocks are allowed them,” he told her. “When you’ve passed a range of tests and survived the Initiation, there’s a big ceremony and you’re presented with the jerkin.”
“Are they handed down through the generations?”
“The feathers are, because they’re quite hard to get hold of, but you have to make your own jerkin. Then you have to make it again at least once a year. They fall apart really easily.”
Sitsi nodded. “Do they now.”
The others turned in, leaving Sitsi Kestrel and Thyri Treelegs on watch, despite Janny’s insistence that they didn’t need a watch.
The two women sat on the roof of the large dwelling allocated to most of the Calnians and Wootah. Paloma and Sofi had taken their own stone box, since they were on second watch. The roof wasn’t actually a great spot to watch from, since torches lit the yard that was three-quarters enclosed by the three-sided building. That meant their night vision was spoiled and it lit up the watchers nicely for any attackers. However, Janny had said it was the best spot and Sitsi’s night vision was so good that it wasn’t much of a problem.
Warriors and warlocks prepared the settlement for the night then turned in. Muted conversations of Wootah and Calnians below became snores. They watched the stars pan across the sky and the flying creatures of the night flap and flitter by. It was chilly, and they both had blankets. Owsla didn’t feel the cold as much as normal people, so Sitsi asked Thyri if she needed a second blanket.